The Sleepover (9 page)

“He's so cute,” I whisper, mostly to myself.

“He's a she,” Veronica states. “Male ducks are silent. No quacking for them. Also, did you know a group of ducks is called a raft? True fact.”

I stare at Veronica, but Paige chooses to answer my question from before instead.

“Think about it. Where else could they have come from? And I know one of their ducklings hatched black, because afterward Matthew Willington told this whole awful ugly duckling joke at lunch.”

I watch the ducklings waddle along the base of the bathtub, trying to climb the walls and slip-sliding down again. “Whoa.”

It hits me that we stole them.
Stole
them. I'm a criminal. Does that mean there is someone with criminal tendencies lurking inside me? But I'm always
good
. I wanted last night to get regular crazy, not law-breaking crazy!

“We need to return them,” says Paige.

“You mean sneak
back
into the science classroom? My mother will murder me. Murder!” Which was bound to happen anyway, but why hasten the process?

“You're always saying that, and yet here you are in one piece. Besides, your mom will murder you worse if we've lost Anna Marie. At least now we have a clue. We need to go to the school and see what else we can find there.”

“But it's Saturday. It'll be locked.”

“Nope.” Paige shakes her head. “Remember what's happening at school later today?”

I look at her with blank eyes, and Paige laughs. “Oh, Megs. Did you sleep through yesterday's pep rally?”

“Right!” Now my eyes get big. “The basketball game against Hillside!” I'd gone home with a slight headache from all the pounding on the bleachers everyone had been doing, but all that energy and excitement had been kind of cool. I can't believe I forgot about it so quickly. Then again, forgetfulness
is
kind of the theme of the morning.

“Kobe Bryant's middle name is Bean,” Veronica says. She's scooped up four ducklings from the tub and now has them nestled against different parts of her, including one in the crook of her neck. It's like she's recreating the stuffed animal hideout in Anna Marie's room in duckling form.

“What?” I ask.

Veronica tries to bend down for a fifth duckling while keeping the other four in place. “Kobe Bryant. He's a basketball player. You were talking about basketball. Have you ever had Kobe beef? It's supposed to be far superior to regular steak.”

Paige digests this information wordlessly and then picks up her phone again. I manage a small smile before rescuing the duckling trying to escape down Veronica's back.

“It says here they need to be kept really warm,” Paige offers, examining the screen on her cell. “It's fine in this bathroom, but we're gonna need to bundle them to get them to the school. Do you think we could get Max to find an old towel for us?”

“Not unless you want to double the length of your lip-lock,” I guess.

“I know! We can use my extra bathrobe!” Veronica says.

“Extra? You not only packed a bathrobe for a sleepover, you packed a backup, too?” Paige asks.

“I like to be prepared,” Veronica states.

I help Veronica remove a duckling from the bend in her elbow, and place it back in the tub. “I hate to say it, but it's probably gonna get pooped on. Is that okay?”

Veronica shrugs. “Sure. I have two more at home.”

The three of us nestle the ducklings carefully inside Veronica's fluffy yellow bathrobe, where all but one of them blend right in against the soft material. Paige tucks the bundle into my backpack, which Veronica slips onto her front so she can keep watch as we walk. Good thing Veronica clearly doesn't mind looking super-odd.

Ten minutes later we're standing in front of my school.
Veronica sticks two fingers inside her mouth and extracts something pulpy and orange, which she then tucks into the bag.

Um . . .

“What is
that
?” Paige asks a second before I can.

“Chewed-up carrots. When you were emptying Meghan's backpack, I borrowed your phone and saw you can supplement duckling food with small bits of veggies. We had the tray of carrot sticks Mrs. Guerrero brought down, which none of us even touched last night—no big mystery because why would anyone eat carrots when they have pizza and Doritos and M&M's?—and if you ask me, Mrs. Guerrero was crazy for—”

“Veronica!” Paige interrupts.

“Yeah?”

“Why are you giving the baby ducks
chewed
carrots?”

“Oh, well, mama birds chew the food for their babies first, and I figured ducks are birds, so they'd probably feel more at home that way.”

This noise comes out of my mouth that sounds a lot like a whimper. “Backpacks are washable, aren't they?” I ask in a small voice.

Paige just sighs and looks out across the school's empty parking lots. I only see two cars parked at the very far end of the side lot.

“C'mon, guys. Let's do this.”

W
e (plus a backpack full of baby ducklings) stride up to the entrance of West Oak Middle School and rattle the front doors. Um, yeah. Not gonna happen. The school is locked up tight.

“I thought you said it would be open for the game this afternoon?” I'm trying not to sound too accusatory, but I might not be succeeding.

Paige blows her bangs out of her eyes. “I
assumed
it would be. But the game's not until four, so I guess . . .”

Veronica disappears around the corner of the building. She pops her head back, points with two fingers to her own eyes, then at us, and motions with her hand for us to follow. Like we're spies or soldiers or something. Rambo Veronica: on the move. But we don't exactly have another plan B. I take off after her, and Paige saunters along behind me. We creep along the perimeter of the building, yanking on each side door we pass.

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

We go three-quarters of the way around the building to the last sidewall, where gray cement blocks outline the double doors to the gymnasium's emergency exit. I've only ever been through these doors when we do fire drills. And of course . . . they're locked. From inside the backpack, the baby ducklings make tiny squeaking noises that sound about as hopeless as I feel right now.

“It's no use,” I say. “The whole school's locked. What do we do now?” This time, instead of sounding annoyed, I have to fight to keep the whine out of my voice. But really, it
is
a whine-worthy situation. How are we ever going to find Anna Marie if we can't even follow up on the measly clues we have?

Veronica busies herself readjusting the backpack straps on her shoulders as Paige marches up to the very last door on the wall. She gives us a
Here goes nothing
look and then tugs on it with all her strength. It opens so easily, she stumbles back and lands on her butt in the dirt as we all gape at the door. Veronica shoves it closed.

“What are you doing?” Paige screeches, popping up and dusting off her black skinny jeans.

“Peek in first. Make sure the coast is clear,” Veronica says with a shrug. “Junior Detective basics.” She eases the metal
door open again, then sticks her head inside and swivels it left, then right. “Looks clear to me. I think it's the locker room.”

Paige and I follow her inside cautiously. As soon as I feel the warm heat on my cheeks, I sniff and then wrinkle my nose.

“Definitely the
boys'
one!” I say.

The smell is pretty much the opposite of Jake's sweatshirt's soap-and-mint boy smell. This is stinky socks and BO all the way. Ick. I pinch my nose and try to breathe through my mouth. I also try really hard not to think about the fact that
OMG, we're in the boys' locker room
. Where boys are usually . . . you know.

In front of us is a long bank of green metal lockers, leading to the corner of yet another row. In the distance I hear the sounds of a shower. My eyes bug out of my head.

“Um, guys. I know we shouldn't be in the school at all, but I
definitely
don't think we should be in
here
!”

“So true.” Paige shudders. “Let's go!”

We wind our way through a maze of lockers, but the shower noises just seem to get closer. Oh no. No, no, no, no. My heart is thudding so loudly, it sounds like a marching band.

But what's even worse is when those shower noises stop altogether.

“Run!” Paige whisper-yells, and the three of us book it around the corner.

I spot an exit sign over a door and aim for it. We burst
through into an empty hallway, panting heavily. Close one! That could have been mega-awkward. Veronica checks on the ducklings while we catch our breaths. “Everyone is good. Waddleworth looks a little motion sick though.”

Waddleworth?
I mouth to Paige.

“We should stay on the move,” Paige says, pushing off the wall and leading the way to the eighth-grade wing. We pass the inside entrance to the gym, where the walls are covered in painted posters cheering on the basketball team. We creep past the vending machine with its sugar-free juices and healthy snacks, and then the empty cafeteria, minus the regular school-day smells of goopy lasagna and soggy broccoli.

We're just about to turn the corner, when we hear whistling. Paige holds out her hand to stop us.

Of course, Veronica walks right into her.

Paige sucks in a breath and then puts a finger to her lips. She peers around the corner and then back at us. “Janitor,” she whispers. “He just went into Mr. Fontana's room, pushing a mop.”

“Oh great. That's right next to Miss Shanley's,” I answer. “Do you think he already did hers, or is hers next? Which way was he coming from?”

Paige shrugs. “I couldn't tell.”

The three of us stick in place, waiting, like our feet are in cement. Paige acts as lookout on the eighth-grade corridor
while I dart glances over my shoulder at all that empty hallway behind us. I pray hard that no one will come around the corner and spot us. It's so quiet that even our deep breaths seem to echo. I can't remember ever being in our school when there wasn't all kinds of talking and slamming lockers and shoes scuffing on the floor. This kind of silence is super-eerie. Even the ducklings must sense something, because they're still too. To calm my nerves, I start counting in my head. I do this a lot when teachers are passing back tests, and it works. Sometimes. I'm all the way up to 146 before Paige whispers.

“He just came out! Now he's going across the hall into Miss Ross's room,” she reports.

“What do we do? We can't keep standing here in the middle of the school! What if someone sees us? We'll get expelled!” I say.

Paige bursts out laughing (quietly of course), and I put both hands on my hips. “I'm really sorry,” she says. “It's just when you're upset, your eyebrow goes up, and, well, it's kind of funny to see just one wiggling. Oh man, that was really rude. Forgive?”

My hands fly to my face, and my fingers explore the smooth skin above my eye. I'd almost managed to forget about it again. Drat, Paige! Although it's going to be this times eighty-seven classmates come school on Monday. I wish I'd worn the
knit cap Veronica had offered me before we left Anna Marie's, but I was worried it would make me look way too much like a burglar, and the last thing I wanted to do before breaking into school was dress the part. Um, plus it had a picture of the Wiggles on it. So there's that.

Maybe getting expelled wouldn't be such a bad thing, after all. Maybe my mom would let me wait until my eyebrow grew back before finding me a new school to attend.

And, hey, if we get caught and I get sent to juvie, maybe I can convince the scary teens who are there for serious stuff that my eyebrow is some kind of sign of how tough I am, the way prisoners tattoo teardrops on their faces to show they've murdered someone. Then at least they'd leave me alone.

I'm pretty deep into my jailhouse fantasy when a duckling lets loose a tiny quack from the backpack and snaps me out of it. Paige is still peeking over at me with sorry eyes, waiting to see if I forgive her. Of course I do. Paige can be a little bit insensitive sometimes, but she doesn't mean anything by it. And besides, having Paige stick up for me at school on Monday is possibly the only thing that could maybe keep the mocking at a minimum. Paige is Popular with a capital
P
, and if Paige says my solo eyebrow is cool, chances are, by the end of the day, half the girls at school will be volunteering to shave their own off.

I smile and shrug, and Paige pulls me in for a hug before
saying, “We have to get down that wing. Let's make a run for Miss Shanley's room on the count of three. Veronica, it's the fourth door on the left.”

Veronica hums distractedly, her hands in the backpack of ducklings.

“One, two,
three
,” Paige whispers, and I take off running on my tiptoes. I follow Paige into the science classroom, skidding around the corner and narrowly avoiding a desk with a chair stacked on it.

Neither of us have Miss Shanley, but her science classroom looks pretty much like ours. A giant periodic table poster covers one wall, and a framed print above Miss Shanley's desk says in block letters,
NEVER TRUST AN ATOM. THEY MAKE UP EVERYTHING
. Hardy har. In the corner, a skeleton wearing a top hat dangles from a closet door.

The other corner has a deep plastic tub lined with towels and lit by a heating lamp.

A very
empty
plastic tub.

I glance at it and then back at Paige and Veronica.

Wait.

Where's Veronica?

I make my way over to the doorway. “I don't see her!”